1.23.2006

Euro Guide for Beginners

eu•ro or Eu•ron. pl. eu•ros or eu•ro's 1.The basic unit of currency among participating European Union countries.2. A foreign born professional basketball player, occasionally from Europe.

Well before Austrian hackles were raised over Turkey’s prospective entry into the EU, and the very idea of what it meant to be European crept across the Caspian, our fair Association employed a definition of ‘Euro’ so broad, so inclusive, as to make it both meaningless and profound.

As no less an arbiter of geopolitical subtleties than Donyell Marshall himself once noted, when his then new teammate on the Raptors, Mongolian born Mengke Batteer, demanded Marshall pay him in exchange for switching jerseys so Marshall could have his favored # 42, “Boy, those Europeans sure know how to negotiate”.

In short, if a player is white and foreign they are a Euro. If a player is European, they are a Euro. If a player is seven feet tall and has a name that the average American finds difficult to spell, they are occasionally a Euro. As of yet, no African player has been described as a Euro.

But beyond the messy definitions, beyond the Cabarkapas, the Zazas, and the Zorans, lie some of basketball’s most passionate practitioners. What follows is an entry-level guide to these men and the lands from which they came. Our more advanced readers will find much of this information familiar, and may wish to refer to our previous, more expansive roundtable Euro discussion, held this summer.

ARGENTINA

Population: 39,537,943

Example: Andres "Chapu" Nocioni

Style of play: scrappy, fearless, reckless and prone to flopping

Notable anecdote: Of the play of Aregentinian icon, Manu Ginobili, Denver Nuggets head coach George Karl said, "I'm going to put in on tape and show my son how to play basketball...just put your head down and run into people, I guess that's a new brand of basketball."

Notable anecdote: During a Blazers practice, the 7-4 Sinanovic once got into a fist fight with 7-3 Korean teammate Ha Seung-Ja, who left shouting, "I'll sue! I'll sue!" Seung-Ja later came back with a wooden pole and began swinging it at Sinanovic before he was restrained by coaches.

Do they have black people?: No, but they have Muslims.

FRANCE

Population: 60,656,178

Example: Boris Diaw

Style of play: lumbering if over 6-foot-9, skittish if smaller

Notable anecdote: Passing on Queens-bred star Ron Artest in the 1999 NBA Draft, the Knicks instead selected 7-3 French center Frederic Weis, who never made it to the NBA and is best known for being literally jumped over by Vince Carter in the 2000 Summer Olympics.

Additional notes: Most French NBA players are actually born in the Carribean Islands.

Do they have black people?: A better question is, do they have white people? All French NBA players with the exception of the aforementioned Frederic Weis are black.

GEORGIA

Population: 4,677,401

Example: Nikoloz "Skita" Tskitishvili

Style of Play: a wussier, slightly disinterested version of Lithuania

Notable Anecdote: Skita, and his then Warriors teammates Andris Beidrins (Latvia) and Zarko Cabarkapa (Serbia) once pulled up to an NYC club in a horse-drawn carriage.

Additional notes: When asked about his rumored "ballet training" on draft night, Skita shot back (in perfect, hip-hop-inflected English) that it was actually a form of Georgian national dance.

Do they have black people?: No. For the millionth time, it's not that Georgia.

GERMANY

Population: 82,431,390

Player: Dirk Nowitzki

Style of play: Dirk

Notable anecdote: Shortly after a playoff loss to the Spurs in 2003, Dirk and then-teammate Steve Nash got hammered at a nearby pub, an event documented with photos that have made quite the rounds on the internet.

Do they have black people?: Yes, but only that guy in all the Fassbinder movies and one-time Can yowler Malcolm Mooney.

LITHUANIA

Population: 3,596,617

Example: Arvydas "Big Red" Sabonis

Style of Play: all the little things with surprising grace and feeling, iron will to win

Notable Anecdote: Zydrunas Ilguaskas was once spotted trolling around the Cleveland suburbs in a stretch Excursion. He stopped to watch a child hit a pinata and then proceeded to keep his friends' neighbors up by drunkenly reveling in Appetite for Destruction and Licensed to Ill.

Additional notes: A young Yao Ming used the screen name "Sabonis" when posting on basketball message boards.

Do they have black people?: No, but they name a lot of their male children "Darius," which has already caused a great deal of confusion around the league.

RUSSIA

Population: 143,420,309

Example: Viktor Khrypa

Style of play: demonstrate far more heart than other Eastern Euros, making their relative absence in the NBA surprising

Notable anecdote: Russia's most notable NBA player, Andrei Kirielenko, has 14 different nicknames, including "Electronic," a reference to the Russian kids film Adventures of the Electronic, in which there appears a robot double of the boy Sergei Syroezhkin.

Do they have black people?: Yes, beware of Viktor Keiru, the "Black Russian," an up and coming NBA prospect of half-Russian, half-South African heritage.

SERBIA & MONTENEGRO

Population: 10,829,175

Example: Vlade Divac

Style of play: tough and rugged, yet with a high level of finesse

Notable anecdote: While playing for the Kings, Divac and Peja Stojakovic were able to improvise at such a high level using what Divac calls "Serbian telepathy" that he began calling Peja "Special Boy."

Additional notes: Serbia & Montenegro has produced the most NBA players of any European nation to date.

Do they have black people?: Despite the name Montenegro, there are no black people in Serbia & Montenegro.

UKRAINE

Population: 47,425,336

Example: Vitaly "Ukraine Train" Potapenko

Style of play: they play with a surprising amount of style and humor

Notable anecdote: Potapenko once had a personal website linked to the Sonics homepage with audio clips of his impersonation of Robert DeNiro, among other bizarre features.

61 Comments:

This is fantastic, but one thing: before you call the Serbian style of play "tough and rugged," you might note that Peja Stojakovic missed four games with a pinky sprain earlier this year. Nobody tough or rugged has debilitating injuries that involve the word "pink."

They're most certainly closer to being "Euro" than they are to being domestic products, and they have a unique brand of play that magically suggests they spell "colo(u)r" that silly British way that they choose to use. It's pretty amazing that their style of basketball can tell us something about how they spell words.

They too have black people, but they all dress funny.

And what about Puerto Ricans? I think the fact that they beat us in the Olympics grants them honorary "Euro" status.

P.R. was rejected for questions surrounding their true Euro-ness. Nonetheless...

PUERTO RICO

Population:3,828,506

Player: Carlos “Carlitos” Arroyo

Style of play: Nimble and athletic, often poor decision-makers

Notable anecdote: (VIA WIZZNUTZZ) The Washington Times reported that The Washington Wizards were told by the NBA that the shorts of Gilbert Arenas and other Wizards players were “too long and that they would be rquired to suit up in shorter pairs. Arenas joked that the replacement shorts were "Daisy Dukes" and everyone in the locker room laughed. As if on cue, [Puerto Rican] rookie Peter John Ramos emerged from the showers wearing nothing a pair of large ratty burlap underpants. Without missing a beat, Arenas quipped: "or we could just get PJ's mom to knit us a pair of those Uncle Jessies!”

Additional notes: PR’s most famous baller ever, Jose “Piculin” Ortiz, still plays for their national team at over 40 years old.

we'll have to continue to post the countries we cut for space in the comments. i wonder i still have them.

by the way, big baby did the introduction and the illustrations (as well as the t-shirt). yes, he's a genius. shoals, DLIC (fka THC), and i, the recluse, are responsible for the text of the guide. in case you were curious.

i cannot believe the clipper with the best nickname ever was not mentioned, nor his own ethnicity/country of ultimate origin mentioned -- eric piatkowski aka the polish rifle--holla at the warsaw pact young bols--someone's throwing a empty bottle of polska in kracow in derision

Pau showed great resolve after being attacked by being "too soft" for a few years, and showed his critics up by growing a beard which seemed to affect his game and made him a bit tougher and more fearless. He's definitely having a better year with the beard. He's a lot more intimidating now.

I have a friend who worked at a little amusement park near Sheffield Lake (by Cleveland), and Ilgauskas used to go up there to (and I'm not joking) ride go karts. One night he was so drunk that while my friend was watching him walk to his car, he dropped his keys, and instead of picking them up, he sluggishly kicked them over and over towards his car, and drove home.

I've always wondered whether Dirk Nowitski and Detlef Shremph were second generation products of the Nazi lebensraum eugenic program. Can't you just picture some SS men deciding to have the Third Reich's tallest officers mate with the women who scored highest on the obligatory jump-shooting exam?

i've been peeping the site--in fact linked it--since way before you guys got the much deserved pub, but i haven't commented up 'til now because i wanted to make sure not to comment until i had something intelligent to contribute--or at least interesting.

what compelled me is really kobe's 81 which i will leave a subsequent comment on his tribute post with the shot of the museum of natural history stop in central park, manhattan--which was one of my favorite stops during my years at nyu, and incidentally, also one of stanley kubrick's (he used it as a backdrop in a photo featured in a recently released collection of his photographic work). i was going to mention that you guys compelled me to rethink kobe a little--i'm not a fan--so i was gonna write on that... then the 81 happened. then i saw this post, and i stopped procrastinating.

before anything else, the artwork is hot. props. i like the text, too. but if i might be so bold as to add some thoughts...

first, what was the criteria for what countries made the list? georgia and bosnia don't really seem to belong... tskitishvili was a complete fluke and really shouldn't have been drafted at all (as his minutes show). sinanovic, i can sort of understand his draft selection, as he's 7' 4" but otherwise, bosnia?...

what about turkey... who has submitted two mugs to our fair association in great need of artistic rendering. and speaking of frederic weis-like mistakes, the houston rockets passed on rashard lewis for mirsad turkcan, who never came over... turkey is as much euro as bulgaria, georgia or bosnia--wait, now that i think of it, turkoglu's originally from bosnia, so their inclusion might be warranted.

there are some serious russian athletes out there besides kirilenko... i really thought sergei monia would make more of an impact. he was an animal for cska moscow dunking on everything and stepping back to hit the occasional 3, but as of yet, kirilenko is still ivan drago.

serbians, however, are not tough and rugged. they are the italians of basketball. just ask the turks... my friend, atilla, who happens to be a turk, once said that the italians ruined soccer by introducing the flop. the serbians didn't invent it, but they sure made it common.

lastly, i tried not to comment on the inherent racism of the "do they have black people?" question... i'm still trying... great post otherwise. great blog... i'm consistently humbled.

oh and by the way, it's true the most famous basketball player in puerto rico is jose ortiz, but the most popular puerto rican baller in the states is bobbito garcia.

a few very contrarian responses for aloneconformist (stricly out of respect for the euro game you just dropped on us):

--our criteria was sloth. we originally listed all foreign countries but most of them were boring and it was gonna be hell to try to track down some wacky haitian fact about dalembert, etc.

--wait wait...it all makes sense. the italians brought the flop to soccer??? although initiated by divac, i would say ginobili--italian by heritage--brought the flop to unprecedented heights of popularity (sort of like what kareem did for the hook shot and what szczerbiak did for plantar fascitis)

--serbia is divac. divac's beard = tough and rugged. end of the serbia debate

--interesting that you mentioned the inherent racism of the "black people" question yet failed to mention the BEHEMOTHLY OVERT RACISM of a Euro Guide for Beginners. we feel you, though.

--i'm a little puzzled by the last remark. bob played for Capitanes de Arecibo in PR...and Wesleyan if you really want to take it there. But if you really really realllly want to take it there, Carmelo would be the most popular baller in the states...

...speaking of which, we really should have done Mexico, which Denver seems to have locked the market on (Watson & Najera).

Speaking of Puerto Ricans...what ever happened to Carmelo Traveiso and Edgar Padilla? That 95/96 UMASS team with them in the back court and Camby down low was possibly my favorite NCAA team of the last 15 years.

aloneconformist--let's talk about the "inherent racism" you see in the "do they have black people?" question. i'm going to use an incredibly basic definition of "racism" here: the belief that one race of people is superior to another. the question obviously treats race in a frank manner, but it makes no judgments about anyone based on race, so i fail to see how it's racist at all.

as the person who came up with that question, i'll attempt to explain what i was thinking. it was a general reference to american ignorance and xenophobia, to W's alleged comment while in brazil ("you have blacks, too?"), to the surprise we all felt when we learned sofoklis schortsianitis was a dark-skinned black man, etc. basically, it was supposed to be funny. sorry if you were not amused.

Apparently we're giving our readers a bit too much credit when we make jokes about race.

The comedy is pretty clearly an ironic performance of the US's short-sighted understanding of race. In other words, "Do they have black people?" is by no means a serious question, but a criticism of someone who would be silly enough to ask such a silly question.

let me try and be a little more diplomatic about it (not dip-esques; e's got that on lock)

the euro invasion was supposed to represent the long-awaited whitening of the nba. . . when "euro" came to signify anyone not from canada, the caribbean, or africa (exclusion of africa=the racial dynamic in the whole thing, canada and the caribbean too close to count), it inadvertantly opened up a whole 'nother can of worms, i.e., how "black" is the sport of basketball in these other countries? not as in "African-American culture," but how much is it in those countries also a marker of race?

france, for instance, has some terrifically huge issues with race, and as the guide points out, most of its products are black.

americans think of basketball as a racialized sport; we were simply trying to figure out either 1) if this makes sense worldwide and, more pressingly 2) how stupid some people were in positing the influx of international players as a wind at the back of pure whiteousness.

also, i would like to personally announce that i know next to nothing about international basketball. i am fairly sure that the characterization of serbs as rough and rugged WITH FINESSE (emphasis mine) had as much to do with their penchant for ethnic cleansing as their ability to pass well while maintaining scraggly facial hair.

my interest in eastern europe stems solely from the fact that my people once called it home. i don't think my understanding of those places or the people that live there has progressed much beyond pre-WW2 terms, if not that ol' 19th century slang.

Not to pile on, but since these misunderstandings always seem to repeat themselves, I think its worth making the point that language in and of itself can/should never be described as inherently racist (or inherently anything, for that mater). That's not to say that language can't be racist. Even our fairly innocuous "do they have black people?" Euro-guide quip, under certain circumstances - say, the John Birch Sporting News or Denmark's Chamber of Commerce - would qualify as deeply racist. Its all about context. That said, its fair to ask that before making serious claims about the racism of a post or comment, we make a good-faith evaluation of the context its written in. And as DLIC pointed out - if a blanket stereotype about the 'soldier-like discipline' of Serbs doesn't set off the same alarms, you already understand what kind of context it is.

whoa... is this a comment record on this site? i would have joined the repartee but i don't get e-mailed when you leave comments in rebuttal... so i'm a little late.

to brown recluse, esq... it's not that i wasn't amused. i was... i just felt a little ashamed of being so. i'm not "black" and i'm not militant or particularly that sensitive to issues of race--i thought abercrombie and fitch's chinese laundry t-shirts were funny (and i'm asian)... but i can also see why they were wrong. not to say you're question is to be compared to abercrombie, but if you don't see anything wrong with the question... then you don't see anything wrong with the question. as a play on "american ignorance and xenophobia" i can see it could be very funny, but...

ah so... isn't that "behemothly overt racism" toward euros, dr. lawyer indianchief, what makes it such an effective satire? it is well-stated early in the piece the american euro confusion...

silverbird5000, i'm not sure that language, i.e. communication, can or should be separate from the ideas from which they are conceived... you're not making that argument are you... okay, i see... but even the context here is somewhat questionable... alright, again, not from any stance of accusation or disrespect--just as devil's advocate for a moment--the context of that statement in the inclusion of this site, funny as it might be on the whole, could easily be received as somewhat offensive despite it's purposeful context. you see, because... you're white. and it's just a delicate situation to lampoon race outside your own. i personally don't think it should be but we all know in this country, it is. and it's clearly evident of my own racism to have seen a photo of just one of you, but the words and stories of many, and to have assumed you all to be white (and sexist to assume you were all male). you have written very eloquently and delicately on the race issue in american basketball in the past and that was certainly not lost on me. that's why the question stood out. it strikes me there are some--in fact, i know at least ten personal acquiantances--who would have sent hate mail, and i know their response would play somewhat into the type of ignorance on whiteness mentioned in earlier comments, but then... they don't like basketball, so who cares.

whew... okay... you're right shoals...

it's a non-issue, fellas. i really wasn't offended. it was just one of those things you see and go, "whoa... that could be taken the wrong way." so no beef from me. all cheddar. you gotta feed me a drawing of turkoglu and okur, though.

oh and by the way... the reference to bob was a shout-out... he's a former teammate in the basketball city league out here and now he's my photo editor while i do some freelance work for "bounce: from the playground." you could check it out at www.bouncenyc.com but the site is all out of date and shit. is carmelo of pr descent? you learn something new everyday... well, you'd be right then.

although i stand by everything we've said to try and justify the "do they have black people" category, i probably should remind myself that this was originally written for cracked, who had already expressed concerns that the piece they'd asked us for wasn't in keeping with their company philosophy. the extra obtuseness (or at least very limited, blunt sense of irony) might well have been our attempt to meet them halfway.

melo is indeed half 'rican. it is kind of amazing that this isn't a bigger deal. though this seems like the wrong time to start with the "latino americans' relationship with basketball" topic.

how have you only seen a photo of one of us? as far as i know, the only image of us that's ever been on here was four deep.

and though we have done the racial roll call in the past, as FD's most vocal member, i'll go ahead and repeat that i'm solidly jewish and middle class, albeit often mistaken for all kinds of recent immigrants. i don't think that FD's authority on racial issues can be gauged by the ethnic make-up of the collective, but i suppose it doesn't hurt to keep in mind the background of whoever's making the remark.

I'm a first generation, half-lebanese, half-ukrainian upper-middle-class American honky.

On this here internets, I've garnered the reputiation of being extremely uber-sensitive to issues of race (I've called everyone from Joe Pa to some of my best friends "racist" at some point on my blog)and while I can theoretically see how one can make the argument that it's possible to "take this the wrong way," I stand by the argument that the "Do they have black people?" question is entirely self-conscious of the fact that it's a "racist" question--thus the humor.

Honestly, just as I was amazed when somebody took offense to Shoals hilariously conflating Argentinians and Puerto Ricans (with the explanation that Manu's jersey was popular because "35% of NYC is Puerto Rican" comment), I find it difficult to wrap my mind around the notion that anyone who is capable of appreciating this site is going to be offended by what is very clearly a self-conscious joke at the expense of ego- and ethnocentric Americans, not something particularly "racist."

I'm a member of the FD chain gang (Although I've been severely on my slack game).

I'm American, therefore, I'm ignorant of all other nations and their peoples. The only interest I have in foreign sovereign states is to find trivial details about them in order to validate my presumption of American supremacy or to laugh at their cultural idiosyncrasies. I'm black, therefore, I'm entitled to the patience and the limitless condescending-less sympathy of the white man up to and including my acts of rage and my unrepentant glorification and advocacy of anti-social behavior. Due to my blackness I have been endowed by Divine Providence an extraordinarily girthy fuck rod and an insatiable appetite for the fairest of the fair sex.

Now that's all out in the open, I can say definitively that the "Do they have black people?", question is not offensive and is in fact funny and informative, be honest, upon hearing the name who knew that Darius Songaila wasn't a descendant of Ham? That's almost as confusing as the whole Cuban Vladimires thing in MLB.

The post and the question in question were not discussed with me prior to posting but I have subsequently given it my "Afro pick" seal of approval.

The black has spoken. The verdict has been rendered, "Not racist"! Next case.

now that's we've settled that, two other things that i have less than 250 words on:

1. do not be caught not having read arenas vs. patrick or espn's recent in-depth melo treatment. these are why i live.

2. this artest deal is anti-climactic beyond belief. this rumor's been around since last year. peja adds nothing to the pacers and the kings are beyong having anything added to them. i was personally rooting for an odom/artest swap, which i'd actually come around on over the last few days.

hmmm... isn't there a pic of shoals solo somewhere? in a bar or something, holding up a napkin or was that somebody else? is it possible i just didn't notice the rest of you? or maybe i just didn't recognize at that time that this was a multiple author blog. anyway, i'll say only one more thing about the question...

perhaps too many of my acquaintances are communist manifesto-thumping social activists... maybe their ultra-sensitivity to race-infused satire and uv rays has rubbed off on me, maybe their ceaseless PC propaganda has in fact conditioned my brain to question things that are otherwise pedestrian... something to consider. but i'll be damned if i'll have my sense of funny dragged through the mud!

you're right, the question was self-conscious, just not necessarily obviously aware of what it was self-conscious of... but i get it. the air was already clear...

I remember reading some article about Mehmet Okur back when he played for the Stones, and the writer kept going on about how Memo has this giant Rottweiler who was completely vicious and dangerous and the writer feared for his/her life. Which was pretty classic, because Okur makes it to the U.S. and he buys the most unreasonable thing one could buy.

Actually, Potapenko was NOT the one with his own site like that. It was Peja Drobnjak when he played for the Sonics. The Drobnjak Manjaks! Here's the URL in case you want to check it out:www.nba.com/sonics/drobnjak/manjaks.html

I will add that Sloviaian swingman Bostjan "Boki" Nachbar once scared the crap out of me.

Once when I was on a date (well, a breakfast date) my and my lady friend were at Empire Cafe (Montrose & Westheimer - good coffee, great cakes, crappy food) admiring the cakes when all of a sudden a giant hand comes from behind and grabs me on my shoulder and says gruffly "What are you doing here?!"

I thought I was being shaken down by the KGB - or some other similairly accented Eastern European law enforcement. I gave a small yelp (which did not impress the date) before Boki started laughing at me.

Note that just a week or two later Boki dunked on Karl Malone and became a 4 week cult hero here in Screwston. Maybe he was practicing his powers of intimidation on me.

empire is mad overrated but you've just made it into a national landmark for me. almost enough to make me go there this sunday instead of the breakfast klub.

also, if you live in houston and knew nachbar, maybe you can tell me how i might go about trying to work for the rockets when i move there full-time this summer. my ideal job is writing press releases for rafer alston charity events or picking up take-out for stro.

the art on this post is fucking outstanding. i would buy that shit on a tshirt two minutes ago if it were available. i admire the effort on the current shirt, but let's be honest, it doesn't reflect the fact that you are covering -- and dear lord god i so don't want to say this but -- A LEAGUE OF STYLE. you put some of this business on your clothes: instant hotcakes. yes, some intricacies of the shading and all that would be hard to pull off in one or two color, but big baby whatever your name is has the obvious talent to pull it off. put my name first on the list for the fd 2nd edition threads.

Catfish and friendly service vs. crap food and guys with thick black frames who cried during the Dashboard Confessional show?

Waffles & Wings vs. a slogan which tries to establish their relevancy by declaring that their competition "sucks"?

I think we all know who comes out the winner there - and I have to add that the parking at Empire sucks especially on the weekends when all the edgy people who live in the suburbs come down to Montrose to buy their vintage furniture.

what the fuck--did the obscene number of comments on this post cause some dimensional shift--which one of you motherfuckers is from houston?

maybe this'll make you feel better... right around that time we saw boki at the westside tennis club and kept yelling at him "boki! boki... yo boki!" 'cause that's what calvin murphy kept yelling at him in a state of complete frenzy every time he passed him on the court, back when he was the color commentator.

boki got pissed and wanted to fight us.

it was hilarious. we just laughed as his boys dragged him away. i guess only his friends and guys he's scared of can call him boki--oh, and just so you know, c-murph may have acted like a clown, but he was a scary motherfucker.

I know they're in a bit of a lull, but if we're going to count Argentalians (Itargentines?) as Euros then what about the Aussies? They have black people and they still oppress them, although they let them run in the Olympics from time to time. So equating that situation with 1930's US Olympic team we are about 20 years from the arrival of the Aussie Wilt Chamberlain, although unlike the original model he'll be stiff as a board but have 30' range.

And then there are the Brazilians of German descent, but apparently they'd rather play for national glory than Association millions.